Burning Man Site Infested with Flying, Biting, Stinky Bugs

Spending a week at the Burning Man arts festival in the middle of a baking-hot alkaline desert with no showers or toilets may SEEM like the most fun a person can have, but you know what would make it even better? Swarms of biting insects crawling into your clothes.

Just over a week before Burning Man starts on August 30, the Nevada desert has been “overrun by thousands of flying, biting, crawling bugs,” according to festival organizer John Curley.

“They’re everywhere. They bite. They crawl all over you. They get up and in you,” Curley says. Apparently one of them went up a woman’s shirt and into her bra, and another managed to get into a welding mask and make itself comfortable next to another woman’s eyes.

So that means when you’re out of your mind on drugs this year, those bugs crawling under your skin might actually be real! Awesome!

“What’s going on? We don’t know. We don’t know how the little critters survive in the heat and the sun. All we know is that if you pick up some wood, you’re likely to uncover hundreds or thousands of the things.”

Black Rock City Playa posted this picture to Facebook, showing what looks like a spot of damp soil around a tire, but NOPE IT’S BUGS.

They also wondered if maybe the nearby wildfires will smoke the bugs out. Here’s hoping!

Gizmodo has since reported that the swarms are probably Nysius, which release a terrible smell and like to jam their proboscises under your skin looking for water. Also, they’ve been feeding on mustard seeds, so if you crush them on your skin you’ll break out in welts.

Seriously, does anyone have a spare Burning Man ticket I could grab because this just keeps getting better.